The workshop, “Assessing the Human Health Effects of the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill,” was held June 22 and 23 in New Orleans. During the first day’s sessions, speakers and panelists discussed the potential adverse health effects for humans stemming from the oil spill for various populations. The second day’s sessions explored current monitoring activities, the types of research methods and data sources currently available, and questions to consider when developing short- and long-term surveillance and monitoring systems.

Presentations covered the groups at risk of exposure and possible acute, chronic, and delayed health effects.

Official U.S. Government Web Site on the Spill Response

This site is apparently replacing the Deepwater Horizon website. It contains news and links to resources from many Federal agencies. For example, the Small Business Administration has a Disaster Assistance site for providing loans to affected small businesses.

Today’s news (from the old website) includes news that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will devote $10 million to research the potential human health effects of the oil spill. The NIH National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) will recruit clean-up workers and Gulf residents to collect biological samples, health histories, and information about the clean-up work they performed and the nature of their oil exposure.

Maps and data

The latest information about the oil spill’s trajectory, the position of NOAA’s research ships, spilled oil’s coastal location and the areas closed to shipping can be found at geoplatform.gov/gulfresponse/.

To access the data materials generated for and by the Deepwater Response Incident, you can go to data.gov/restorethegulf/.

Oil drilling moratorium

Apparently the courts don’t believe that there’s justification for a moratorium. This despite the fact that an Associated Press investigation found that federal regulators do not typically inspect plugging of these offshore wells or monitor for leaks afterward. (See “Enviro groups stunned that govt ignoring 27K wells”)

Of 50,000 wells drilled over the past six decades in the Gulf, 23,500 have been permanently abandoned. Another 3,500 are classified by federal regulators as “temporarily abandoned,” but some have been left that way since the 1950s, without the full safeguards of permanent abandonment.

Abandoned offshore oil wells

The story reports that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) warned in 1994 that leaks from abandoned offshore wells could cause “an environmental disaster.” GAO recommended that the Minerals Management Service (MMS) set up an inspection system. (Which MMS didn’t do. ) Although MMS did commission a 2001 study on such wells. According to that study MMS officials were

“concerned that some abandoned oil wells in the Gulf may be leaking crude oil.” But nothing came of that warning.

The GAO report is “Offshore Oil and Gas Resources: Interior Can Improve Its Management of Lease Abandonment.”

MMS does not have an inspection strategy targeting its limited resources to ensure that wells are properly plugged and lease sites cleared

in March 1993, the active OCS leases in the Gulf of Mexico had estimated lease abandonment costs of about $4.4 billion, but were covered by bonds that totalled only $68 million

GAO’s recommendation (below) was closed, but not implemented.

Recommendation: In order to better protect the environment from the effects of OCS oil and gas lease abandonment and the federal government from incurring the costs of such abandonment, the Secretary of the Interior should direct the Director, MMS, to require MMS to develop an inspection strategy for targeting its limited resources to ensure the proper plugging and abandonment of OCS wells and the clearance of lease sites.

Comments: After reviewing the results of the March 1996 study of techniques for removing offshore structures, MMS has decided that its inspection program is adequate. MMS does not intend to develop a different inspection strategy.

So not only is it an environmental disaster waiting to happen, MMS wasn’t even getting money from the oil companies that it was supposed to.

That takes you to the website of a company called IdeaScale. They had information there about the White House’s OpenGov Dialogue (which is now closed). But ironically there was no link from that to the OpenGov websites of other U.S. government agencies, even though IdeaScale has an Open Government page with a paragraph specifically noting how its tool can be used by “Federal Agencies.” It even has a link so that if you’re with a federal, state, or local agency, you can sign up. But no list and no link!

So I Googled “+site:ideascale.com +gov” and got a list of hits. I eventually got to the White House Open Government Initiative site at http://www.whitehouse.gov/open, which lets you click on “Around the Government” and see a “dashboard” for federal agencies showing their progress in meeting certain milestones. When you click on the name of a department or an agency, you get sent to the “Open Gov” page for that agency. From there you can go to the dialogue tool for that agency.

However, a link to the actual Agency Contact Information for Dialog Tools is provided on that page (and yes it’s in the text at the top, but not really prominently displayed—it’s just a link in the text rather than highlighted as an important link at the top of the page). But what surprised was how many links I was surprised by how many hoops you had to jump through to get to one comprehensive list. It wouldn’t be that difficult to put a list to that agency list on the other sites. In fact, there should be a prominently displayed button on the White House page.

Also, from the couple of idea pages for different departments I looked at, it appears that you have to register to submit comments (or vote on ideas). I haven’t done that, but given the way it’s set up I wouldn’t be surprised if you have to register for each agency separately. (If that is true, maybe I can make a suggestion about that.)